Tommy looked up from his ammunition readouts as the major slid over the side of the Reapers' fighting position.
The Reaper position was about a hundred meters behind the primary defense line, not far from the battalion headquarters hole. Like the battalion position, the Reapers had just shoveled out an area about six meters across. In their case there were two different levels, with the shallower being at the rear.
The Reapers, if they had any ammunition, could engage with a variety of heavy weapons. They had 75mm automortars for indirect fire and heavy flechette cannons for close-in work, both of these besides their anti-lander systems.
Unfortunately, in the last nine hours they had shot through every bit of ammo they carried in, gone out and scrounged up most of the additional packs and shot all of them off. They had moved forward to the line twice to support with flechettes, engaged additional landers and fired off mortars until the position was mostly protected by empty ammo boxes.
But at this point, they were pretty much flat. Tommy had about two dozen magazines left, but they weren't compatible with any of the Reaper systems and two dozen mags weren't going to stop the Posleen. That was not a particularly comfortable thought as he watched not only his own ammo but the rest of the battalion's going down like a waterfall.
"Lieutenant," Mike said as he slid into the mud in the bottom of the hole. The light rain had dropped off but it had lasted long enough to saturate everything in sight and fill all the holes with a few inches of slippery orange clay, the infamous "Georgia red clay" for which the region was unjustly famous. One of the areas that the battalion's energy was flowing away to was simply keeping the suits from sinking into the bog.
"Major," Tommy replied. If O'Neal wanted to go with monosyllables, fine by him.
"You been watching the battalion's readouts?" the commander asked.
"Ayup," the lieutenant replied.
"There is one possible way we can continue the mission. Sort of."
"And that would be, sir?"
"You're sounding rather cynical, Lieutenant," the major said.
It was impossible to get anything like body language through the suits, but Tommy would swear O'Neal was amused.
"Well, sir, I like killing Posleen. Not having them kill me because I'm out of ammo. That sort of situation always annoys me."
"Good news then; you and your troops are in position to save the day."
"Ah, great. Sir. Does this involve killing Posleen?"
"Possibly. But mostly it involves being pack mules. Your team has been using standard ammo, so you're at the top of the power levels in the battalion. And you're out of ammo. So I'm sending you to go pick up some. And some power."
Tommy raised his hands palms upward. "They also serve who simply fetch ammo. Are they sending in resupply birds?"
"No, but, coincidentally, there's a rather large cache of ACS materials nearby."
"Ah."
"One that's off the books. So until we started discussing it the Posleen shouldn't have known about it."
Tommy worked his face inside the gel in lieu of shaking his head. "Off the books?"
"Well, I'd have preferred that nobody find out, but if it's a choice of facing a court of inquiry for putting a cache at your family farm or having my battalion wiped out, I know which way I'll hop."
"Oh."
"More good news. Sort of. Your girlfriend is at the farm with a mixed group of civilians and military personnel. You can enlist her as a pack mule."
Tommy's jaw worked inside the armor and he counted to ten. "You want me to bring Wendy up here!? What in the hell is she doing anywhere near this shit?"
"The same thing my daughter is, surviving," O'Neal said with a smile in his voice.
"Your daughter?"
"She apparently survived the nuke that killed my father," Mike answered and gestured to the northwest. "They're about six miles that way. That's where I grew up."
"Oh, holy shit, sir. I'm . . ."
"Don't worry about it," Mike said, waving a hand. "Let's just say that we both have good reason to hold this position. And to survive doing so." He paused for a moment then gestured helplessly. "But . . . even if we can retake the pass after we pull out, we're probably not going to walk out. Or, hell, even be carried out . . ."
"They're sending the SheVa, sir. . . ."
"Yeah. One SheVa, about a million Posleen. I'm sorry, but, no offense, I wouldn't even expect the Ten Thousand to make it. Much less one unsupported SheVa. The point is . . . when you see my daughter . . . Just tell her I love her. Okay?"
"Okay, sir." Tommy started to reply then stopped at a raised hand.
"I've given your AID all the information it needs about the cache and the link-up point," O'Neal continued. "We're critically short on time so I want you to pull out right away, even before the rest of the battalion. Despite the time issue, you should take some R and R time when you meet up with the group. And your lady-friend." O'Neal waved vaguely again then tapped the knee of the lieutenant's suit. "Take what you can while you can get it, Tommy. There's only so much that God gives us in life." With that he rolled back out of the hole and crawled towards the battalion position.
"Boss, there's a little problem here." Sergeant Major Ernie Pappas still preferred the term "Gunny." He'd retired as a Marine Gunnery Sergeant long before aliens were anything more than science fiction. But as one of the early rejuvs he had been either training or in the frontlines since the first landings. And he knew a screwed up tactical situation when he saw one.
"Sure is," O'Neal replied. "Pulling out is going to be a stone cold bitch."
The battalion was laying down a continuous curtain of fire but the Posleen seemed to be limitless. They had slowed down in their advance, and all the forces to the north had pulled out, but they still were in continuous contact. When the battalion pulled out, it had basically two choices. It could pull out fast, above ground, or it could dig backwards. But in neither case could it maintain fire. And some of the suits, despite refills, were reaching red zone on power again.
"We're going to get chewed up when we exit," he continued. "Shit happens."
"We're not just going to get chewed up," the Gunny said. "We're going to get hammered."
"What if they pursue us?" Stewart asked. "I have to take their side, here."
"We'll go up Black Rock Mountain," O'Neal said. "They're going to find pursuit tough."
"They're hearing all of this, you know," Duncan interjected.
"Yeah, but I don't think their attacks can coordinate this fast," Mike said. "Otherwise they'd be all over us. We've been hit hard, what, five or six times? If whoever was running the show over there could hit us hard now, he would."
"Traffic control must be a beast," Stewart pointed out. "So we should get while they're limited?"
"Except we're still going to get hammered," Gunny Pappas said.
"You keep saying that, Gunny. I know."
"We'll get less hammered if somebody stays back to suppress them."
O'Neal turned his body towards the veteran NCO. "You've got to be joking."
"I can run a simulation, sir," the Gunny replied formally. "We're looking at nearly fifty percent casualties if we just pop out of the holes and run. We're out of grenades, we're out of mortars, we're out of anything we can use to knock them back. We're getting five to six God Kings on the line at a time, now. Unless they're engaged they'll hammer us even under holograms."
"I know, Gunny, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sacrifice some pawns to save the king," O'Neal said quietly. "Or a knight. We're all going out, as fast as we can. We only have to get around the corner of the ridge. Fifteen, twenty seconds tops in view."
"With every Posleen in sight hammering us from the rear," Duncan pointed out. "Which is our most lightly armored spot. Except on you."
"Thanks," Mike replied coldly.
"We've got a few troops that are . . . mobility challenged anyway," Pappas said grimly. "Nagel and Towbridge both lost a leg. Others have been hit. Leave me behind with a group of the worst off. Lowest on power, shot up, the sick, lame and lazy. We'll provide cover fire as you unass."
"We can fall back by fire and maneuver . . ." Stewart said. "Except I'm not an idiot and I know the Posleen just walk right into it. Christ, Top!"
Mike looked at the ground as the other suits turned to look at him. Finally he spoke.
"Fifteen. That's enough to suppress their fire as we retreat. I'll dump a list." He paused and switched over to a private frequency. "Top, I forgave you for First Washington a long time ago."
"I know you did, boss," the sergeant major replied gruffly. "You want to stay, but you know you can't. The battalion will just . . . go away if you buy it. You need Duncan and Stewart to watch out for the details. I can hold the . . . I can hold for long enough."
Mosovich led the way up the slope and over the hill. At this point, between the continuing rain and the heavy traffic into and out of the cache, there was a noticeable, and slippery, trail into the cave. The wet and the slope were not the only obstacles with which they had to contend; the hills were littered with fallen trees.
The area had suffered repeated multi-kiloton strikes and while none of them had been on the near side of the hill the ground shock and pressure wave had still dropped trees and caused small landslides.
They moved carefully, crawling over individual fallen trees, detouring around tangles from slides, the wet leaves slipping and slithering under their feet, until they reached a point just below the crest of the ridge. Then Mosovich halted the group and leopard crawled up to the ridgeline.
He had seen the valleys below only a few weeks before and the devastation that greeted his eyes required a moment's adjustment.
The western end of the main valley of the Gap was just visible from his position. The Gap was a narrow, but low, north-south crack in the wall of the Tennessee Divide; a crack from which the continuous racket of battle resounded. Mosovich wasn't sure what the situation was at the moment, but there was no question the ACS were hotly engaged.
Just to the north of the Gap the valley widened out to the east and west. This valley was both low and fertile and had once provided a significant fraction of the produce necessary to run the defending corps. When Jake and Mueller had passed through only a week before it had been busy with the movement of the corps and tan and yellow with the corn, barley and pumpkins ready to harvest. Now it was a barren wasteland. The only sign that there had ever been defenders there was a pile of melted metal that Jake suspected used to be an artillery battery. The ground itself was black and gray with some patches that looked shiny as if they had been turned to glass. The tree-clad slopes that had surrounded it were now covered in fallen, leaf-stripped trunks that looked like nothing so much as scattered matchsticks.
The O'Neal farmstead was in a small pocket or "hollow" on the north side of the main valley and about two hundred feet higher. It was roughly diamond shaped with the entrance pointing slightly southwest rather than directly south. The entrance ran up the gully created by O'Neal Creek and made several twists. Given that the hollow was settled in the early 1800s it appeared that the O'Neal paranoia was probably hereditary.
The holler had not suffered as severely as the main valley but it was badly damaged. The far side of the holler was totally destroyed with all the trees down and a center zone that was scoured down to the bare rock; the lander must not have been very high. The house was splinters and the heavy sandbag and concrete bunker to the side, which had been hidden in a hedge, was a smashed ruin. It was in the latter ruin that Cally said O'Neal had last been seen.
The near side slope was not as badly hit, but it was still going to take quite a while to pick their way down the hillside. There had been a path but it was nearly invisible for all the fallen timber. The one good piece of news was that the most probable avenue of approach, up the road which had apparently been ground zero, was completely covered in trees and rockslides.
Mueller led the way down, occasionally moving the more accessible trees and rocks. Despite his care he slipped twice on the wet hillside, once very nearly breaking a leg.
"At least the Posleen were going to have trouble getting in," Mosovich said, when he caught the far larger NCO on the second fall.
"Which just means we get to dig out his body," Mueller said quietly. "Even if he was alive, and it didn't sound like he was, he's not going to have survived the night."
"We'll see," Mosovich said. He slid over the bole of an oak that must have been growing there during the Civil War and then down the relatively open bluff beyond. Over the last few years he had humped up and down these mountains to the point that he considered most obstacles to be pretty easy stuff. But this tangle of fallen trees was a pain in the butt.
The last slither, though, dropped him into a narrow strip of ground behind one wing of the O'Neal house which was relatively free of debris. There was a fair amount from the house itself, including scattered clothing that they really ought to collect up for the refugees. But his attention was centered on the bunker. Most of the house was backed onto the hillside and the bunker was on the far side.
"Sergeant Major Mosovich," his AID chimed. "Be aware that there is a slight increase in radiation in this zone."
"Bad?"
"Not really. It won't reach clinically challenging levels for another six to eight hours. And the isotopes that I'm detecting are of a type to decay quickly; the radiation will reduce faster than you're absorbing it."
"Okay, we still don't want to stick around," he said, waving the group around the house.
He moved cautiously. Despite the fact that the area looked clear it was possible that the odd Posleen might be moving around or even waiting in ambush. Most Posleen normals were bonded to individual God Kings. However, when their master was killed, the normals tended to become "unbonded." Thereafter, until picked up by another God King, they wandered more or less as wild animals. These "ferals" were an increasing problem not only along the frontier areas but in the interior. Posleen reproduced at a phenomenal rate and tended to survive infancy even without care. So a single feral could pump out multiple young in just a few years, each of which reached maturity in eighteen months. Thus, in areas where they were not kept in check they occupied a primary carnivore niche in the food chain.
Jake Mosovich was not about to enter that food chain if he could avoid it.
The area appeared clear, however, and he slipped around the stump of the house to the front, carefully sweeping his rifle from side to side as the rest of the group closed up behind him.
He could see the bunker clearly now and he could see a very man-shaped hole where something wasn't.
"Cally?" he called, walking over to the bunker as he lowered the barrel on his rifle.
The bunker had reinforced concrete walls with a sandbag and steel top. It was clearly designed to survive heavy-duty direct fire. The nuke, however, had ripped most of the sandbags off the top and smashed in one side of the concrete wall, dropping shattered concrete and bent steel I-beams into the interior.
Despite that Papa O'Neal might have survived. Overpressure blasts from nukes did more destruction to items that had an "inside" and an "outside" than the rather homogenous character of the human body. Jake remembered about a thousand years ago taking a class on nuclear warfare that covered that fact. Houses tended to be ripped to shreds in conditions where humans survived just fine. The heat and the radiation might kill them. But not the overpressure unless they were at ground zero or picked up and "tossed" by it.
Only two problems. Papa O'Neal had been inside the bunker when it collapsed. The debris was likely to have killed him. Second problem being that he wasn't there. It was pretty evident that something or someone had come along and dug a body out of the rubble.
"He was right there," Cally said quietly.
"Yep." Jake squatted and looked into the interior of the bunker. The rear was down as well, but a doorway was faintly visible at the rear. "Is that how you got out?"
"Yeah," Cally said, bending down to peer into the rubble. "He was right there, Sergeant Major!"
"He's gone now, Cally," Jake said gently, straightening up. "Let's take a quick look around to see if there's anything worth salvaging then get back to the cache before whatever took him comes back."
"Posleen?" Mueller asked, looking at the ground. Most of the grass had been flash-burned by the blast but there should have been tracks. Posleen made very definitive tracks with their claws.
"Probably," Mosovich said after a moment's pause. "I don't see any tracks at all. But the most probable explanation is the Posties got the body."
"Fuck," Cally said. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, god damn, cock-SUCKER! He really didn't want to get eaten. He really, really didn't."
"I'm sorry," Wendy said, wrapping her arm around the teenager. "I'm so sorry."
"Shit," Cally replied, wiping rain-mixed tears out of her eyes. "Shari is not going to be happy."
Wendy snorted and hugged her to her. "No, she's not. None of us are."
Elgars was sweeping back and forth around the fallen bunker but after a moment she came back shaking her head. "I find track of Cally. No other." Her voice sounded odd. Low pitched and sing-song.
Mosovich looked at her side-long but Wendy just shrugged. "Annie, you're channeling again." Ever since they had met, the Six Hundred captain occasionally would seem to manifest personalities of other people. In the very few cases where the personalities were obvious, and known, they were dead people. It especially seemed to occur when she used a new skill, such as tracking.
The captain looked up at the sky and sniffed. "Yes." She sniffed again, deeply then looked toward the road. "Take cover. Someone come."
As Mosovich faded backward into the shadow of the ruined house his AID chirped again. "Sergeant Major, incoming message from Lieutenant Thomas Sunday, Fleet Strike ACS."
"Well, we have the pass," Tulo'stenaloor muttered. He had moved forward from the protected bunkers and factories around Clarkesville and now watched the streams of oolt'ondar moving up to the pass. "It only took two hundred thousand oolt'os and uncountable Kessentai. And we only have it because they gave it to us. And the ground is torn to ribbons, which will require repair before we can push through effectively. But we have the pass."
"But they will be back," Goloswin said. "They intend to fill it with fire again."
The Kessentai was that oddest of individuals among the Posleen; a known warrior who had quit the strife, settled down and been bitten by the bug of a hobby. In Goloswin's case the bug was tinkering. There was nothing that he loved more than getting a piece of equipment, human, Indowy, Posleen or Aldenata, and taking it apart to figure out how it worked.
Tulo'stenaloor had tracked him down on a planet a dozen systems away and lured him to Earth with the promise of puzzles to drive him mad. As it had turned out, every puzzle that had been thrown at him, from dissecting human sensor systems to breaking into the ultra-secure AID net, had been apparent nestling play.
However, he was still having a fine time. All this and the promise of riches beyond measure in addition; what could be better?
"Yes, but they will have trouble doing that," Tulo'stenaloor said.
"Will you pursue?" the technician asked carefully. He was well aware that his understanding of the new methods of the estanaar were spotty. Most Posleen oolt'ondar would latch on and chase the humans to their deaths. Like the Tinkerer, Tulo'stenaloor had found a new way to do business. But in the case of Tulo'stenaloor, that business was gathering the finest minds he could and then hammering the humans into so much thresh.
"No," Tulo'stenaloor said after a moment. "The route they took is difficult enough for them; trying to pursue them with oolt'os would be nearly impossible. We'll just have to let them go. But I will see what I can do about this resupply mission. What news on their efforts to arrange for . . . fire-support?" It was a human term that he had readily adopted.
"Their General Horner is no longer using his AIDs and the AID network is beginning to attempt to counter my infiltration. But at last word the only hope was still the SheVa gun they call 'Bun-Bun.' It is under repair and is being upgraded near Sylva."
"Then something must be done about that infernal contraption." The warleader sighed. He touched a control on his tenar and waited until it picked the signature of Orostan out of the mass of other Kessentai. "Orostan?"
The senior oolt'ondar looked down at the town of Franklin and the gathering lake to the west with distaste. He recalled the first major check to their advance when over a hundred thousand of the host had been trapped in the collapse of the Sub-Urb. Now they were being pushed back to it, and it looked no better than on the way through. Very little in the way of loot, hardly any decent land that had not been torn to shreds. Basically nothing but a useless dot on one of the human's "maps." Such a useless place to fight and die over.
"Estanaar?" he replied. He had hitched his star to Tulo'stenaloor all the way back at the Great Gathering. Most of his fellow oolt'ondar thought him mad; Tulo'stenaloor had been badly defeated on Aradan Five and his "New Way" was heretical in the extreme. But Orostan had been picking out all the information he could about these humans and it was apparent that the usual method of the host, of the Path, to charge ahead trying to use mass to overcome the enemy, was a quick route to suicide. Tulo'stenaloor's attempt to use human tactics against them had been at least partially successful. Would have been successful had the damned suits not taken the pass and the demon shit SheVa gun not fought so hard in the retreat. All the highly trained pilots of tenaral and oolt'pos had been destroyed by the gun or mischance, and most of the elite oolt'ondar had been lost in the assault, leaving them with nothing but to fall back on "charge and die."
Not for the first time, but for the first time so clearly, he felt a wave of depression. Such a waste, such an incredible waste. Fine Kessentai, young Posleen that he had trained with his own talons, nothing but thresh to be gathered and distributed to the host. There had to be a better way than this.
"The suits are preparing to pull out of the Gap," the warleader said. "Unfortunately, they have a distressingly good plan for doing so; they intend to leave a sacrificial rear guard."
"That's unusual for the suits," Orostan said. He had not fought the armored combat suits of the humans, but he had studied all that he could of them. And they rarely sacrificed even one suit, much less a detachment.
"Agreed, but they intend to return. They are awaiting the SheVa gun getting to the vicinity of Franklin, where it will be in range to reach the Gap. If it gets there, all will be over. We might as well throw the Staff."
"I understand," he replied. He did understand. But understanding and knowing what to do about it was two different things. "I'm getting reports from the front. The SheVa has been significantly enhanced. We couldn't stop it on the way in; I'm not sure we'll be able to stop it on the way back."
"I have somewhat more data," Tulo'stenaloor said. "It has been armored and heavy weapons added to it. But it is only armored on the front."
"Ah," Orostan snorted. "Not on the sides?"
"Only for plasma fire on the sides, and only under certain conditions. If you . . . ambush it . . ." the warleader used the human term; the Posleen had no equivalent.
"I will do what I can, estanaar," the oolt'ondar replied. "I will do what I can." He looked to the northeast and was just in time to watch the first fireball. The image was seared on his retina for a moment; the flash of white directly above the main concentration of forces that were lining up to take the road through Rocky Knob Gap.
He closed his eyes against the glare as his pupils and internal filters automatically darkened against the damaging light. "Well," he muttered, pulling his crest down against his neck in anger. "Now we know which way they are coming."